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Special City Council Meeting February 13, 2001 Page 11 not bring people or buyers in. Mr. Brannon pointed out that there is a lot of land around Paris that could be sold or purchased at a much cheaper price. Mr. Brannon advised the City Council that the land that is around Lake Crook is not ideally suited for development. It is poor, it is not good land for development because if you come and look at the maps that he has developed, it is broken into about sixteen triangles and any developer will tell you that a triangle is death. It is a bad layout, poor efficiency, it does not generate a lot of lots. He said he did a preliminary development plan for Lake Crook on the north side of the lake, which is 525 acres. He divided it into one acre lots roughly with a set-back from the lake with a minimum of 150 feet for dwelling and 60 feet wide streets. Mr. Brannon advised that he was able to get 230 lots out of that acreage at a cost of approximately 8.5 million dollars development cost, and the math works outs to be something like $36,000.00 per lot for development cost. He said conventional wisdom, if you are in business, says you double that cost of your development, and that is your asking price for you lot. Mr. Brannon said you are starting with an asking price of $72,000.00 per lot and you have not included the land cost. He said the numbers get pretty bad. Mr. Brannon said Mr. Malone asked him to check into the cost of running the sewer line to the sewer plant, and the feasability is going to take care of itself. Mr. Brannon said that is why he was asked to look at that. He said there were some questions on position papers that the Chamber of Commerce has raised and he wants to look at that, but he believes that every point that is in the Chamber of Commerce's position paper is about things that they would like to see questioned, or questions that they would like to see answers for. Mr. Brannon said they will do the feasability and the numbers and include it in their report. Mr. Brannon said that he told the staff today that it is his opinion that there is way too much land to develop as a formal park because the city does not have enough city staff to maintain a formal park, so that means that some of the land has to be left in the natural state. Mr. Brannon said if the city had a thousand acres to develop, the absorption rate in Paris, Texas, is going to be 20 years. He stated that he would have to get the numbers and verify this with the real estate people here. Mr. Brannon said the other plan is for a trail system. He said it appears to him that if the city was to do a trail on the northwest side of the lake, it would be 4.5 miles long. If you did a trail on the south side of the lake running about the Maxey Rifle Club all the way to near the dam where the recreations are already, it is almost 3 miles, so you would have about 7.5 miles of trail there that could be developed. Mr. Brannon said if you do a